Tech shares led the stock market's recovery in the USA this past week form one of its worst corrections in the past four years during August, thanks to gains by Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft, after those three companies reported earnings results that were better than had been expected.

The Class A shares of the Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) climbed more than 5% to $719.33 per share.

Traders bid up eBay, which reported earnings late Wednesday that came in well ahead of what analysts were expecting. Its been quite a mix, from the corporate side and the central banks.

With central banks in the spotlight, more attention will now turn to the Federal Open Market Committee meeting Oct. 27 and 28, and the Bank of Japan's monetary policy meeting on Oct. 30.

Alphabet said the number of paid clicks, which require advertisers to pay only if a user clicks on the ad, rose 23 percent, compared with 18 percent in the previous quarter. "Sure it will. But we could still get there without that happening", said James of the possibility of the Nasdaq 100 hitting a record.

WRONG TUNE: Pandora Media tumbled 34.9 percent after the Internet radio giant reported a loss for the third quarter and gave a weak outlook. WTI crude for December delivery settled down 1.7% for the day and 5.6% for the week at $44.60. Skechers United States of America slumped 31.5 percent after the shoe company's revenue disappointed Wall Street. Alphabet's stock is up 39.65% in the last 200 days. Still, despite a rally of 11.1% since the 2015 lows in August, the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index is still down 2.6% from its May 21 record close of 2130.82. The JPX-Nikkei Index 400 rose 2.1 percent to close at 13,878.26. Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 1.3 percent and the Shanghai Composite Index in mainland China rose 1.3 percent. Brent crude, used to price worldwideUS equities since 2011, professional stock forecasters on Wall Street have held steady in their year-end calls. The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yield climbed to 2.07% from around 2.05% just before the announcement. The dollar rose to 121.23 yen.